I’m moving back to Blogger, so if you want to keep following the fun, please update your bookmarks and blogrolls accordingly. So long, WordPress! Here’s the latest, greatest incarnation of Calvin Freiburger Online!

Sr. Keehan and 60 progressive nuns claim abortion coverage is not in the Obama Health Reform Law, yet the Dept. of Health and Human Services released $160 million for emergency insurance to cover abortions … UNDER the new law (read about it here: http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=38056). So who is really to blame for this great expansion of abortion and birth control? Hint: It’s not exactly who you may think.

David Horowitz and David Swindle have decided to can one of NewsRealBlog’s contributors, Alex Knepper. Knepper, who also contributes to David Frum’s FrumForum, claims that he was punished because “Horowitz is not interested in posts that take Ann Coulter to task over the war in Afghanistan,” and Frum eagerly repeats Knepper’s claims, taking them as—surprise!—more evidence that right-wingers are circling the wagons around their “extremists.”

David Swindle responds to Knepper’s allegations here, explaining that the tone of his Coulter critique, not simply the act of critiquing her, was the issue with his final NRB submission, and that either way, he wasn’t simply fired over a disagreement over tone—it was the last in a string of disappointments (including some, um, interesting views about sex) from Knepper. Knepper fires back here.

As NRB’s editor, Swindle is in a much better position to respond to the specifics if he so chooses than I am, so I’ll leave that to him. But I do have a couple thoughts about which side has more credibility.

Second, the website is extremely comfortable with passionate disagreement among contributors on a lot of issues, many of which are arguably bigger than what somebody thinks about a particular pundit. A few examples:

Third, as I pointed out last week, we already know that David Frum’s standards of honesty are scandalously low – up to and including REPEATING SLANDER against people if it supports Frum’s agenda. Until Frum owns up to his past misdeeds, every word that appears on FrumForum should be read with extreme skepticism by the handful of readers who still waste their time there.

I love Ann Coulter, but her latest column, in which she defends Michael Steele’s Afghanistan comments, bothers me. A lot.

Yes, she and Steele are right to call Obama and the Democrats out on their posturing about Afghanistan as the “good war” and Iraq as the bad one. Yes, the populations of the two countries are vastly different. No, I don’t know what the best strategy in Afghanistan is (check out David Forsmark and John Guardiano for two competing schools of thought).

Further, in our zeal to make these points, conservatives must be careful not to lose sight of what our ultimate goal should be in Afghanistan—and whatever we decide, we need to stick to it regardless of who’s in the White House. Ann punts on that question, and I don’t recall her voicing any of these concerns during the Bush years. But Afghanistan is “Obama’s war” might be true as far as it goes, but focusing on that aspect on it diminishes the significance of the war and obscures the core question of whether or not America should be there. And yes, in calling it a war “of Obama’s choosing,” Steele did suggest that it wasn’t worth fighting, and that Democrats held a monopoly on the blame for it.

Coulter suggests we’ve already won in Afghanistan, and that a minimal troop presence there to “prevent Osama bin Laden from regrouping, swat down al-Qaida fighters and gather intelligence” is sufficient (wait a minute—weren’t we trying to leave behind a government & military stable enough to do that on its own?).

What disturbs me most is, near the end, how easily—and suddenly—Ann lends credence to the old liberal trope about “neoconservatives” being for “permanent war.” One would think a pundit who’s repeatedly been on the receiving end of such smears would think twice before deploying it herself.

At Power Line, Bill Otis has “a short list of lies, not in any rigorous order, that are doing” Barack Obama in. Always handy.

At NRB, Phyllis Chesler takes on Wonder Woman’s new costume. As I said in the comments, “The new costume isn’t great – the prominence of black is dumb, and the jacket seems too casual for such an iconic hero (kinda like putting Batman in a hoodie) – but I’d be careful about inferring too much about the patriotism angle, one way or another. It’s all more subtle in the new design, but most of the patriotic elements – red, blue, stars, the eagle – are all still there (here’s a bigger pic), and if this promotional art for the new look is any indication, they’re not shying away from her patriotic roots.”

234 years ago today, our forefathers declared America’s independence from the British Empire. For the support of that declaration, they pledged to one another “our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.” And that wasn’t hyperbole – with their actions, they brought upon themselves the very real risk of death and imprisonment.

On this Fourth of July, compare that courage and sacrifice to the potential consequences of getting involved and standing for liberty today – some lost free time, maybe public embarrassment or the hostile words of your opponents – and ask yourself how many of us are living up to their example.

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"We have counted the cost of this contest, and find nothing so dreadful as voluntary slavery. Honor, justice, and humanity forbid us tamely to surrender that freedom which we received from our gallant ancestors, and which our innocent posterity have a right to receive from us."
- Thomas Jefferson, 1775

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The views expressed on this weblog are strictly my own, and do not necessarily reflect those of the David Horowitz Freedom Center, NewsRealBlog, Front Page Magazine, or any other websites, blogs, campaigns, publications, or organizations where I have been employed and/or my work has been featured, nor do they necessarily reflect the views of any individuals employed by or otherwise affiliated with the aforementioned groups.